Photo: BBC
Summary
This separatist conflict in the Horn of Africa is one of the most amazing stories in the annals of African civil wars, featuring a tiny and outgunned province fighting for 32 years to prevail over a superpower-supported opponent ten times its size. A recent border conflict escalated into another war, evidence of the precarious nature of peace in this strategic part of the Middle East.
Background
This struggle, like many before it, has its roots in the British colonial legacy. The myriad intricacies of building stable nations in the wake of withdrawing colonial powers creates hopelessly complex situations. Building a functioning nation out of the confusion of tribal battles, ethnic conflict and competing nationalist aspirations rarely runs smoothly. This art has clearly not been perfected today, and certainly wasn't back in the late 1940's when Britain was pulling back its Empire. Preferring to wash its hands of the Eritrea-Ethiopia question, Britain simply referred the matter to the UN.
The UN awarded Eritrea to Ethiopia in 1952 as part of a federation of the two states. This pleased the Ethiopians because it gave their landlocked country access to two major Red Sea ports at Massawa and Assab. The Eritreans, protested the decision. A common Eritrean view is that Ethiopia has always wanted to annex them in its empire-building activities in the Horn of Africa. The UN gave it to them without a fight.
Passive and peaceful protest measures gained momentum throughout the 1950's as Ethiopia consolidated its hold of tiny Eritrea, and formed its own opinion of what the UN's "federation" agreement would look like. This included scotching Arabic in exchange for Amharic, outlawing Eritrean political parties, and running many of the protest leaders out of the country. Protest demonstrations culminated with a March, 1958 incident when Ethiopian troops killed many protestors in two of Eritrea's major cities. With peaceful protest no longer an option, Eritrean insurgency groups began forming to carry out armed resistance against the Ethiopian forces then controlling the cities and countryside of Eritrea.
Resistance Groups
Resistance continued at a low level throughout the 1960's and by the early 1970's it had crystallized into two major groups: the ELF (Eritrean Liberation Front) and the EPLF (Eritrean People's Liberation Forces). Each defined itself as a Marxist people's revolution and planned to bring a Socialist government to Eritrea if and when the war ended. During this time Ethiopia was receiving abundant aid from the US and functioned as one of America's key listening posts in the Middle East. The fact that the Eritrean rebel groups were proclaiming themselves Marxists made this easier.
However, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was gradually losing his hold on the government. This was due in part to his inability to crush the Eritrean rebels and also because of his focus on foreign policy in favor of minding the power struggles within his own nation. In 1974 he was deposed by a military junta called the "Dergue." The Dergue proclaimed themselves Socialists and in a strange turn about, the Soviets replaced the Americans as Ethiopia's superpower patron. American presence disappeared by the mid 1970's while Soviet tanks, aircraft and advisors began beefing up the Ethiopian armed forces. The Eritreans, conversely, were not supported by anyone and got most of their weapons by stealing them from Ethiopian troops.
In 1977 the Dergue leader Mengistu seized absolute power in a coup that spawned a mini civil war within Ethiopia that left many thousands of people dead. Neighboring Somalia, sensing an opportunity, invaded the southeast sector of Ethiopia in a land grab but was repulsed by the new Soviet-supported military in a February, 1978 counterattack. Meanwhile, in the north a string of embarrassing defeats at the hands of Eritrean rebels compelled Mengistu to organize his forces into an army for a massive invasion to snuff out the ELF and EPLF.
The ELF and EPLF had been doing exceedingly well for a small force that relied on stolen weapons and whose footwear consisted of sandals made from rubber scraps of old truck tires. Until the end of 1977 the Eritrean rebel groups had been successful in "liberating" Eritrean towns and setting up a civic infrastructure in the countryside that included underground hospitals, schools, workshops and political education cadres. The Ethiopian forces in Eritrea had not been a match for the quick-moving rebels who employed classic hit and run warfare and used the country's mountainous and treacherous geography to their advantage.
The high water mark for the Eritreans came during their December, 1977 assault on the main port city of Massawa. It was held by 6000 Ethiopian troops armed to the teeth with new Soviet weaponry and supported by jet fighter bombers. On December 23, hoping to cap a long string of victories over the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea, the EPLF began its attack on Massawa. After a lengthy artillery bombardment, 3000 Eritrean fighters surged out of their trenches onto the flooded salt flats that separated the Ethiopian stronghold from the mainland. They heavily underestimated the strength of the Soviet arms and were cut down by the hundreds as they splashed across the 500 yards of open ground. Within an hour half the force was dead and the rest were forced to retreat under an intense Ethiopian air attack and artillery barrage. The war was about to enter a new phase.
EPLF soldiers attacking the Ethiopian garrison at Massawa. (Mike Wells)
The Strategic Retreat
With a new army, Mengistu's Ethiopian forces rolled north in a coordinated offensive to relieve their beleaguered comrades in Eritrea and bury the rebels. The first of six massive campaigns, the Ethiopians succeeded in all but destroying the ELF and driving the rebels from the eastern part of Eritrea in the first round. The Eritrean forces in the ELF collapsed under the onslaught of modern tanks and close air support. But the operations were terribly costly to the Ethiopians. Their offensives characterized the human wave assaults of World War I. Thousands were slaughtered in trench warfare by the Eritreans. While they were making each victory costly for the Ethiopians, the outnumbered EPLF infantry was no match for the Soviet tanks and could not afford to engage them in huge open battles. Bowing to the obvious, the EPLF (the one surviving rebel group) executed a strategic retreat into the impassable mountainous desert region in the northwest part of the country to continue their resistance from there. One by one the towns fell to the Ethiopian advance and for the next decade the EPLF were forced into a largely defensive posture.
In the early 1980's a drought hit northern Ethiopia, plunging millions into starvation. Famers couldn't plant in their fields because they were full of landmines. In addition, the war created massive refugee flows that further compounded the problem. High profile aid programs from Western governments brought food and supplies to Ethiopia, where they were promptly sequestered for use to feed the Army instead of the starving populace.
Ethiopian operations in Eritrea for the next few years were characterized by massive assaults like the "Red Star" offensive in February 1982. After a month-long bombing campaign, over 100,000 troops threw themselves at the EPLF stronghold in the Sahel mountains. Supported by new Soviet tanks, helicopter gunships and Katyusha rocket launcher trucks, they should have been unstoppable. But the Eritreans held their ground over three months of fighting and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties in the harsh desert battles. Unable to maneuver their armor in the winding mountain terrain and facing determined EPLF resistance, the Ethiopians fell back to the towns on the plains and licked their wounds. A few months later, they would try again. By the mid 1980's they had still failed to dislodge the EPLF from its Nacfa stronghold. The EPLF soon was strong enough to begin offensive operations.
Af Abet
The decisive moment in the war came in the Spring of 1988 when the EPLF overwhelmed the Ethiopian garrison at Af Abet, its main supply depot in Eritrea. In two days of fighting, the Eritreans annihilated three Ethiopian divisions and captured vast stores of ammunition, heavy weapons and equipment. This was an invaluable victory from a tactical standpoint in that it provisioned the EPLF to help wage war for the next three years. It was also a tremendous psychological blow to Mengistu's troops. By this time, Soviet aid was drying up and the Ethiopian troops, demoralized by ten years of stalemate fighting, were deserting by the thousands. Finally, on May 22, 1991, the Eritrean forces took Decamare, the last major town before the capital of Asmara.
